


What She and I Have Lived Through is Stranger Still

by daisygrl



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 22:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18416837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisygrl/pseuds/daisygrl
Summary: Zelda returns home from her honeymoon, unwilling and unable to talk about what happened to her while she was married to Faustus. Hilda and Sabrina do what they can to help her open up and begin to heal.





	What She and I Have Lived Through is Stranger Still

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a quote from "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and is a reference to Zelda's dissociation/depersonalization. In my opinion, the writers threw the Caligari spell at us without really stopping to think about its implications. Here is my attempt to work through that. Also, I am writing Sabrina as the sixteen-year old she is, so her reactions may not always be super rational. She still has learning to do. I know I am putting Zelda through the wringer again in this story. In order to understand her healing process and to do justice to her strength as a character, I think it's important to acknowledge the full extent of her trauma.

Rome

 

"You humiliated me. In front of the entire coven." Zelda finally managed to choke out, her voice wet, dripping with hurt and fear. She had been quiet on the plane ride over, smiling tightly the few times Faustus had deigned to acknowledge her. Pretending to be asleep when his hideous nails curled against her thigh. Several times, she had excused herself to use the tiny airplane bathroom, dying for a cigarette, gripping the tiny sink with cold, white hands. Her breathing was rushed, and her chest felt tight, red splotches spreading over her neck and face. For what felt like the hundredth time, tears rushed to her eyes and panic threatened to overwhelm her.  _Compose yourself. Please. You need to get it together. Right now._

The faces of her niece and her sister, tears dripping down their faces as they watched her take her place behind Faustus, were as good as seared into her brain. She had never felt more alone and ashamed as she walked, blinking away tears of embarrassment, not knowing how she could even manage to take the next step for fear of her legs buckling. All she had wanted in that moment was to disappear, to be swallowed whole by the earth.Anything would have been better than watching her own dignity fizzling away, melting into the air like the smoke from her cigarettes. 

***

"Whatever do you mean, my darling?" Faustus drawled. Their room in Rome was exquisite, the view even more so. Zelda couldn't see any of it. Her hand tightened on her hair brush as she brushed out her curls, tearing savagely at the knots, relishing the pain. "You - you told me to walk behind you! As if I were your slave. As if I were your  _concubine_!" She spat the last word out harshly, her voice hoarse with anger. 

Faustus peered at her with dead eyes. Black eyes. The panic that had been dancing at the edges of her vision began to close in, and she drew a sharp, frantic breath. In the many years she had known him, she had never seen him look like that. And she knew, as she had in that first moment upon exiting the church, that this had been a colossal mistake. 

 

***

She spent her mornings prettying herself, squeezing her body into hideous dresses she would never normally wear, styling her hair and painting her lips as if she were both a large doll and the cruel little girl who tortured her own plaything. Looking into the mirror terrified her. She hated the manic eyes that peered back at her, and searched in vain for traces of herself in the smile that Faustus had asked her to constantly wear. _I'm begging you. Don't let him do this to me. Give me back to myself. Please._ Days went by, and her prayers went unanswered. In any case, she didn't really even know who she was praying to anymore.

 

Nights were worse. The first night, she screamed for an eternity, her body tossed around as if it had never belonged to her in the first place. After a certain point, she found herself unable to determine whether it was her or someone else who was howling in pain within the echo chamber of her skull.  _What a racket._  It certainly didn't sound like her.  _If it doesn't look like me, and it doesn't sound like me, then where am I? Am I no longer here?_  The second night, she let herself go. Her mind floated up and away, her body numb, neither one seeming as though it was or had ever been attached to the other. It helped. She watched the night billow and churn in swatches of blue and black. She remembered little apart from hazy reconstructions, simulacra of simulacra of pain. After that, nothing.

 

In the morning, as she applied her lipstick, waves of nausea came and went, and she smiled. She curled her hair, expertly separating the soft strands, and took Faustus' hand when he came over to inspect her handiwork, giggling sweetly in the girlish register he preferred when he nodded his approval. _If I let my mind go again, there won't be anything of me left_. The thought stunned her momentarily and then reverberated, sending a vicious jolt through her nervous system.  _Sabrina. Hilda. Ambrose._  She turned their names over in her mind, spelling them out, trying her best to recall every detail of their faces. She thought of Sabrina's favourite blueberry pancakes, the silk shirts belonging to Ambrose that she secretly liked to fold (even though she often criticized him for not doing it himself), and the dewy, vegetal aroma of Hilda's garden on spring mornings. It helped. For the first time in days, she found herself considering the possibility of survival. 

 

***

 

Greendale

 

Zelda stepped out of the shower, wrapping her body in a towel, already looking forward to the next one. Not much provided her with a comparable sense of pleasure and comfort these days, and she sought it out where she could find it.

 

"You all right, Zelds? That was your third time showering today?" Hilda's nervousness exacerbated her tendency to uptalk, and Zelda rolled her eyes in response. "I'm fine, Hilda. I wish you wouldn't wait outside the door like that." Hilda grimaced at her sister. She reached for Zelda's shoulder, providing a quick squeeze of comfort, knowing that she wouldn't accept much more than that. Zelda had stubbornly refused to tell her anything about what had happened to her in Rome. Her sister, as much as she tried to pretend otherwise, was in possibly the most fragile state of her life. Hilda knew that the strategy she had been employing, in keeping herself as occupied and distracted as possible, was unsustainable if not downright dangerous. She would wait, though. Until Zelda was ready. Rushing it could damage her in ways Hilda didn't want to imagine.

 

Zelda sat at her vanity, applying her moisturizer. Hilda observed, as she had for several days, that Zelda was discreetly avoiding her own reflection. As if she wouldn't notice. "Any plans for today, Zee?" She kept her tone light and friendly. If Zelda was to open up, she would need a comfortable space carved out for her, one in which she could finally feel safe.

 

Zelda sighed. "Not really, no. I'm hoping to talk to Sabrina, finally." Hilda sucked in her breath. "You still haven't?" Zelda turned to her, dark eyes guarded. "No. In case you haven't noticed, she's been avoiding me." She thought to the tense, guarded conversation they had had at breakfast that morning. Zelda had tried in vain to get Sabrina to talk to her about something. Anything. She brought up her mortal friends, inquiring about Theo's basketball games and the shopping trip she was supposed to take with Roz that weekend. About the history project she was supposed to be completing. She gently prodded her niece about Nick. As a last resort, she swallowed her pride and suggested Sabrina attend the upcoming concert of a boy band she couldn't care less about, but had spent several hours researching the previous night in an effort to connect. Sabrina had been polite but reserved, nodding and answering in brief sentences. After breakfast, Zelda had all but fallen apart when she overheard Sabrina and Hilda gossiping in the living room about everything she so wanted Sabrina to talk to her about. Instead of reacting, she took a shower. 

 

Hilda looked at her with so much pity that Zelda nearly threw up. It was excruciating. "You leave Sabrina to me, Zelds." Zelda nodded and stood, squeezing Hilda's hand gently. She walked slowly to her bed and nestled into the crack between her mattress and the wall. It was a move that was utterly foreign to her, but she didn't resist. She decided that today she would sleep, filling the hours between breakfast and dinner with something other than the desperate scraping together of the tenets of a new religion.

 

***

"Knock, knock!" Hilda opened Sabrina's door without waiting for a reply.

 

"Come in?" Sabrina was lying on her front, studying a copy of the Demonomicon with ferocious intensity. Hilda wondered, briefly, what kind of scheme her niece was cooking up now, and why she needed that particular tome to help her. She shook her head, deciding it was a problem for another day, and took a seat beside Sabrina on her bed, brushing her niece's soft curls aside. "I have to talk to you, my love. It's about Zelda." 

Sabrina made an unidentifiable noise, a hum bred from a cross of frustration and pity. "Is everything alright?" She sighed to herself. She had known this talk was coming, though she had expected it to come from Zelda herself. She knew she had been needlessly cruel at breakfast, and her heart ached a little when she thought of her aunt's sad eyes, flinching a little at every rebuff. That ache was surrounded by something harder, more deeply rooted. A dull pain in her chest that appeared whenever she thought about the events leading up to the wedding.

 Hilda took one of Sabrina's satin pillows and held it to her chest, enjoying the soft coolness on her skin. "I don't think it is, lamb. Why were you avoiding all of her attempts to start a conversation with you this morning?"

Sabrina cast her eyes downward. "It's been... hard. Coming to terms with what happened before aunt Zee's honeymoon. Do you promise you won't get mad at me for saying this?" She looked toward her aunt, and Hilda nodded. "I can't stop thinking about how ready she was to leave us behind. To blame Ambrose for what happened to the Anti-Pope. And during that family meeting that I called? The one where I told her about what happened with my dad? She wouldn't believe me! It was like nothing I had to say mattered to her." Sabrina's eyes were rimmed with pink, and a stray tear had made its way down her cheek. Her next words were so quiet that Hilda could barely hear them. "I hated it, auntie. Watching her walk behind him like that. It's like she was a different person. And I know this isn't fair, and I know it's irrational, but I was mad at her for it." 

Hilda studied her niece for several moments. Sabrina looked up. "You think I'm being awful about this." Hilda shook her head vehemently. "No, my darling. It's complicated. I understand what you're saying to me. But I need you to listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you. Ok?" Hilda's voice broke. She wiped her eyes quickly and continued. "I need you to approach this situation not as a girl, but as the mature person you are quickly on your way to becoming. You have to realize, my love, that everything your aunt did, including standing by Faustus when he blamed Ambrose for what happened that night, was to protect us. Why do you think she agreed to marry him in the first place? It wasn't for love. She has always wanted to be High Priestess, it's true. But more than that, she wanted the whole family to be in a favorable position in case anything ever went wrong within the coven. Sabrina, if she had let on for even a moment that she was standing with us that night, he would have slaughtered us all without a second thought." She looked at her niece, whose dark eyes were brimming with tears.

Hilda sighed and continued. "The only thing she didn't bet on, I think, was the Caligari spell. Honestly, I don't think any of us could have seen that one coming. It's truly black, black magic. And he didn't unleash that particular horror until she was well away from her family. Until she couldn't get away as easily." Hilda's voice was thick with tears. "He isolated her in every possible way, lamb." 

Sabrina hugged her aunt, letting her tears fall freely and mix into the fibres of Hilda's soft wool sweater. "I promise I'm going to fix this." Hilda smiled and softly brushed Sabrina's cheek. "I know, my darling. It's going to be alright."

***

That night, Zelda nursed a glass of whiskey as she struggled to translate the obscure footnotes of one of Solomon's Grimoires. Written in archaic Hebrew, the inky smudges of ancient text writhed and twisted in front of her. The alcohol wasn't helping, but there was no getting through the evening without her habitual three fingers. Or six. Who was counting, really? She tried, again, to concentrate on the text. The smoke from the raging fire she had built in the fireplace, large enough to resemble a funeral pyre, forced its way into her nose and mouth, making her cough. It made the smoky sweetness of her whiskey taste as refreshing as water in comparison. She had been searching in vain for days for references to Lilith, wanting to base her leadership on something more substantial than speculation. Every night since her return home, she had been reading until she couldn't keep her eyes open, usually collapsing in exhaustion just before dawn. It was all she could do to distract herself from the way she was feeling.

"Auntie? Can I come sit with you?" Zelda looked up in surprise. Her niece stood in the doorway, waiting for her to answer. "Sabrina! Of course. Come in. You don't need to ask permission." They sat in silence for a few moments, neither one sure of what to say. Zelda continued to struggle through her text, pausing every so often to make a note in the margins. Finally, Sabrina shifted closer to Zelda. "I need to talk to you."

Zelda kept her eyes trained on the fire, watching the flames leap and dance. One particularly mercurial log spewed out a showers of sparks, flickers of hot gold in the night that seemed to evaporate into thin air. Her throat felt tight, but her voice was surprisingly stable when she spoke. "Is everything alright?"

Sabrina shook her head. "No. I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am." She looked up at her aunt. "For what happened to you. I didn't really try to understand your motivations until today. And I want you to know that I was mad at you, but I know now that that wasn't really fair to you. And I'm not anymore." She drew a short, shaky breath. "I love you, auntie Zee. We all do. And we're here for you. This isn't something you have to deal with on your own."

Zelda squeezed her eyes shut, trying in vain to stop the tears from falling. She had never reacted this way in front of Sabrina, never for a second lost control. She drew a shuddering breath, and turned her head to the side, covering her eyes with one hand, wanting desperately to shield Sabrina from her emotions until she had had a moment to compose herself. It seemed that her niece could understand that. They were the same, whether related by blood or not. Sabrina sat patiently until Zelda turned to face her again, waiting with huge, dark eyes for her response.

"Thank you, sweetheart. It means a lot to me to hear you say that." For the first time that she could remember, Sabrina hugged her aunt. She felt heartbroken at the readiness with which Zelda accepted her comfort, as if she had been desperate for human contact for years but had somehow managed to convince herself that she wasn't.

***

That night, Zelda walked into the room she shared with Hilda, turned on her sister's bedside lamp, and took a seat on the edge of her bed. Hilda was immediately roused, her voice thick with sleepy confusion. "Zelds? Wha- What are you doing? Is everything alright?"

Zelda looked down at her hands. "I was hoping we could talk. About what happened."

Hilda was wide awake in an instant.  _Praise Lilith_. "Right. I'll put the kettle on."


End file.
